Earnings Labs

Polaris Inc. (PII)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Jan 29, 2019

$65.26

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone. And welcome to the Polaris 2018 Q4 and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And please note that today's event is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Richard Edwards, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Richard Edwards

Analyst

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2018 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. A slide presentation is accessible at our Web site at www.ir.polaris.com, which has additional information for this morning's call. Today, you will be hearing remarks from Scott Wine, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mike Speetzen, our Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will be discussing certain topics, which should be considered forward-looking for the purposes of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projections in the forward-looking statements. You can refer to our 2017 10-K and 2018 10-Q for additional details regarding risks and uncertainties. Additionally, all references to fourth quarter and full year 2018 actual results and 2019 guidance are reported on an adjusted non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. Please refer to our Reg G reconciliation schedules at the end of this presentation for GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments. Now, I will turn it over to our CEO, Scott Wine. Scott?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Thanks, Richard. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. It's a little chilly in Minneapolis today but in the city around here is not to whether it's how you dress for it. Weather is certainly a consideration for Polaris although, from the economy and tariffs to currencies and competition, we include many more important and less predictable factors in our planning. Looking back at 2018, I'm extremely proud of the execution of our Polaris team as we profitably grew revenue, gained market share and met guidance despite many external variables working against us. Clearly, our operational and competitive success was not rewarded by the market, which left me feeling a bit like Ohio State or Central Florida, whose accomplishments were not appreciated by the college football selection committee. We're being judged less on the financial performance reflected in our win loss record and more on our week schedule, if you will namely, the perspective impacts of tariffs and a slowing economy. This was most evident on December 4th when a tweet about a tariff man coincided with the inversion of the yield curve and our stock dropped 10%. We are keenly aware of these macro issues and are escalating our focus on strong execution to deal with them in the year ahead. Fourth quarter sales and adjusted net income were both up 14% with 4% organic growth augmenting the incremental sales from both through the period. We did see a drop off in dealer traffic and retail sales in the second half of December, which has since recovered nicely in January but did reduce our yearend shipment as our RFM system appropriately reacted to the slowdown. Exceeding $6 billion in revenue for the full year was a nice milestone. And while both added nearly $280 million to that number,…

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

Thanks Scott and good morning, everyone. This morning I will spend some time on our 2018 results and then move on to our 2019 guidance. Fourth quarter sales were up 14% on a GAAP and adjusted basis versus the prior year with Boats adding $145 million of sales. Organic sales, excluding Boats, was up 4% in the quarter, driven by higher sales of snowmobiles and higher average selling prices, partially offset by lower shipments of off-road vehicles and motorcycles due to tough compares to Q4 of 2017. Average selling price excluding Boats was up 6% during the quarter, driven by the mix of products. For example, we shipped the majority of our high-priced preorders SnowCheck snowmobiles in the fourth quarter of 2018. Fourth quarter earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $1.47. Adjusted earnings per share was $1.83, up 19%, driven by volume, the Boats acquisition, operating expense leverage, lower share count and a lower tax rate. Our EPS growth was muted by ongoing tariff costs and increased logistics and commodity costs during the quarter. For the full year 2018, sales were up 12% on a GAAP and adjusted basis versus the prior year. Boats added $280 million or 5 percentage points to the growth versus 2017. All segments except motorcycles grew for the year on a GAAP and an adjusted basis, including an increase of approximately 4% in average selling prices. Boats also grew year-over-year a pro forma basis. Full year earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $5.24. Adjusted earnings per share was $6.56, which was in line with our expectations. The 29% increase in earnings per share was driven by a combination of increased volume, the Boats acquisition, operating expense leverage, a lower tax rate, partially offset by higher tariff, logistics and commodity costs. Gross…

Scott Wine

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. A year ago on this call, I spoke about an improving global economy and it is in understatement to say that a lot has changed since then. We’re planning for slower growth to mostly stable economic environment, but we're also attracting rising risk of recession and making plans to avoid being surprised when it occurs. Tariffs and higher interest rates put pressure on the economy and the former even more so on Polaris. Currency headwinds are further exacerbating our pressures so the team is working full-time on counter measures to mitigate these impacts. Fortunately, the underlying business is operating as well as it ever has. The long-term savings expected from our strategic sourcing initiatives while eventually more than suffice to offset the aforementioned headwinds, but not in 2019. Our cross functional sourcing teams are working extremely hard and getting tremendous knowledge, which is why the future savings and value improvement will be so great and sustainable. We project a return to growth for the powersports industry with side-by-side's leading the way. Polaris will celebrate our 65th anniversary this summer, and it would be a fair guess that our product innovation maybe dialed up a notch or two. We remain very bullish on our entry into the boat business and our teams are identifying new ways to compete and win. We especially like the pontoon segment and our strong relationships with the engine OEMs gives us great options for our customers. We do not plan to pursue any major acquisitions in the year ahead, but we will invest more in ourselves. We will fund several large strategic bets ranging from the increased research and development programs, factory choice initiatives to better methods of engaging and interacting with our customers. The future for Polaris is incredibly bright. We just need to get there fast. With that, Will, would you open the line for questions?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we will now begin the question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. And the first question will be from Greg Badishkanian with Citi. Please go ahead.

Greg Badishkanian

Analyst

Scott, I think you mentioned some retail slowdown in the second half of December and then things recovered in January. So I'm just wondering maybe what really -- did anything stand out in December, or was it just the stock market volatility or something else any segment or region that was stood out as well? And then is business back to normal now in the end of January.

Scott Wine

Analyst

Greg, I'll tell you, we had a really strong October and November, and really that momentum kept going through the first half of December. And it wasn't Polaris, I mean, it's across many retail businesses and most everyone I have talked to. Some of the banking businesses that I know quite well are also said they saw the same slow down in the second half of December. What we believe is that it was mostly people looking at their 401(k) balances their investment balances and saying it's not the time to go invest in a new RZR, Ranger, or Indian motorcycle and that seems to be what it was. I will tell you we are very encouraged with the trends we have seen in January continuing so far. So it appears to be an anomaly right now and I'm glad to see that the recovery was as good as it was. But you know we've got 11 months and four or five days to play out.

Greg Badishkanian

Analyst

And just on Polaris and Northstar, what's been the customer response? And I know scarcity is always good, it always helps the brand. But how comfortable are you with your inventory availability of that line as we are in early 2019 right now?

Scott Wine

Analyst

We are really proud to build those ranges in our Huntsville facility. And John Dan and his team there have done a great job of ramping up production capability. One of the opportunities we have is we have limited the number of colors you could get that in. So I think demand is actually going to increase as we expand the color options. But really the work that Ken Pucel and his teams have done to create the flow of products through RFM, we are quite comfortable that we will be able to meet demand for the Northstar additions. I mean obviously with this kind of weather, it’s a pretty good option.

Operator

Operator

And the next questioner today will be Robin Farley with UBS. Please go ahead.

Robin Farley

Analyst

I appreciate that there is a lot of uncertainty around the tariff issues. But maybe just to understand like a best case worse case. And I think in your opening comments you did mention that if List 3 goes to the 25% that will be $16 million more incremental, so that was helpful. I guess just thinking about what could go better than the guidance you are giving today? The slides mention, at least one of the slides showing the incremental impact from tariffs says like before counter measures. So is your guidance today including no counter measures to offset the incremental tariff impact in '19? And what could that look like?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Our guidance includes all of the known countermeasures that we can pursue. So there's nothing -- don't think that there is upside if we implement countermeasures, because we put in anything that we think we can do. The best possible scenario would be when they reach the upcoming deadline that they agreed to take the tariffs off that would be the best possible scenario. You would also have to get rid of the 232 tariffs, which has a retaliatory impact of us shipping bikes into Europe, but we don’t see that happening. Therefore, we've given guidance with what we think is the most realistic view. The second best alternative would be we could be successful with our efforts to get relief, which would be the equivalent of having the tariffs go away. But we also are not yet confident in that, although, we will continue to work that very hard. Mike, do you want to add any different color on the numbers?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

I think Robin, just so you understand how we build this up. I mean you will notice that our 2018 impact was about $10 million less than we had been indicating, and a lot of that is really just around timing. Scott pointed out a small portion of our purchases come from China. But obviously with the significant tariff on that’s a huge impact. And when you break that down, there's a fair amount of it that’s indirect, meaning its coming through another supplier and so the tariff ultimately passed on to us. So we have to make assumptions around the timing, and so that’s an area of variability. Tim’s team has been very successful at stating that off but we know that there's a reality that as these things remain in place that’s going to continue to hit us. And so we've got the tariffs ramping as we go through the year and essentially what I would call it full run rate by the time we get into the second half.

Robin Farley

Analyst

And then just maybe one last quick one, just if you had any thoughts on the pontoon segment, it's been growing nicely the last couple of years. And I think you indicated although your business grew that the industry declined in Q4. Is that anything worries you about the pontoon industry?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Q4 is not a quarter to worry about anything trending wise. And we feel very good based on the orders that have been taken at the recent boat shows and the line-up that we have. We were a little bit light on some of the lower end less expensive models, previously with Bennington and we feel like we've got those lined up. And again, the relationship that we have with Yamaha and Mercury, we still believe gives us competitive advantage in pontoons.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be Jaime Katz with MorningStar. Please go ahead.

Jaime Katz

Analyst

I’m curious about your thoughts on motorcycles, and particularly Slingshot to start with. I think either on the last call or the call prior, it sounded like you guys expected that to start turning around maybe mid 2019. I am curious if that’s still on track? And if it is or isn’t, how confident does that make you guys in the mid-teens shipment outlook, because the sentiment that was echoed on the call of your competitor earlier this morning was that the market still remain very week. And I understand there is innovation. But it seems like there are other factors that might be headwinds in that segment. Thanks.

Scott Wine

Analyst

Jamie, I will tell you Slingshot is -- it hasn’t lived up to our expectations the last couple of years. I'm really proud of the work that Steve Menneto and Josh and the team are doing to understand really what's driving the underlying lack of demand. I will tell you the plans we have in place, both for execution and product development are we're very encouraged by. We believe that is we’re going to take that knowledge that we've gained and apply it throughout the year. And we expect '19 to be a better year and then '20 as we continue to the product innovation to be better yet. So not our best effort on execution thus far but we are smarter and better, and we do expect to have improved performance in '19 with Slingshot.

Jaime Katz

Analyst

And then for the strategic sourcing initiatives you guys have been working on, I know it’s a multi-year effort. Are there any important key focuses we should know about in the year ahead or in the next stage that would be helpful to be aware of? Thanks.

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

I think, Jamie, it's important I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we've got savings built in. I think what’s important to understand is we’re not just executing on wave one we’re actually going to be initiating the next couple of waves. So we do have incremental costs associated with that. And a portion of the R&D increase that I mentioned is really dedicated to the project, because as you can imagine as we start to switch suppliers, there's a fair amount of validation work that has to go in when we're off cycle from model year change over. So there's a fair number of moving parts. The good news is we're making great progress. We're really encouraged with what the teams have been coming back with in terms of the quality of the suppliers, as well as the savings impact. And so we feel really good about that project moving forward.

Scott Wine

Analyst

Yes, I'll just add Jaime that what I've been most impressed with is the knowledge and sustainability that we get with this process. I mean, it's extremely rigorous and it's also extremely hard, and that's why it's taking so long. But as we work through the wave one the savings will start showing up in the second half and we'll start wave two here shortly. But as we work through the five or six waves to get through the entire Polaris portfolio, we're very confident in achieving the large savings number that we project.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be Tim Conder with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Timothy Conder

Analyst

Gentlemen we've since been talked about that you're pursuing other things on the List 3 mitigation other than the exemptions, which I think Lighthizer said that should the trade talks failed and they'll put in a List 3 process. What are those other things? Is it we want to use the term exclusions or was there another path other than exemptions or that the tariffs are just dropped as part of the trade deals overall?

Scott Wine

Analyst

I mean, Tim, obviously, we believe that the best approach is a negotiated deal. But if that doesn't happen, we do believe that that Lighthizer and the team will ultimately open up a process to get an exemption. And what we're arguing for I think what you're referring to is really not a Polaris exemption. We're not trying to just help Polaris. We want to make sure that the powersports industry and the thousands of people that are employed in the dealerships in the suppliers throughout the industry are taken care of. Now truthfully, since we're the only one with any significant impact, we're the ones that benefit the most from it. But I think that may be what you're referring to. And we've got a very good lobbying effort. Ellen McCarthy leads our team in Washington and we are working extremely hard. Ultimately, we were probably closer to getting an exemption before they started the negotiations and now we have to wait and see what happens with the formal negotiations. But trusted we are working extremely hard to make sure that we get more fair treatment than that’s happened so far.

Timothy Conder

Analyst

And on the motorcycles gentlemen I just wanted to follow-up on that; one, the completion of Indian for the EU market, getting that to pull on any remaining costs; and then, Slingshot, you got some new things coming you alluded to that Scott here in response to the prior question. How much time, let's just say those don't work. How much time realistically or rope did you give Slingshot here and say, hey, we tried a good product, whatever. How much time do you give that? And lastly, Mike, goals at year end 1920 on leverage?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

That was an effective second question.

Scott Wine

Analyst

I'll start with Slingshot. We're not going to talk about future product plans. I will just tell you that we've learned what customers want. We're going to address that. We feel very good about that. Truth be told, Tim, I think most of the issues with Slingshot are more execution issues on things that we have done wrong versus things that are wrong in the market. We know the people that like to have it really like it and it's our job really to make sure we reach more of those people. So we're not -- and I mean I will remind you when we launched Ranger 20 years ago the first few years were pretty darn painful. And if we had pulled out early, we would've missed a very large business for us. I'm not suggesting that Slingshot could be that big, but I’m suggesting that there's an opportunity for it to be a profitable growing part of the business over the long-term, and in the next several years we will make sure that happens.

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

So Tim on the Poland additional ramp up for Indian and everything is going as planned. You can see from the tariff chart though that we have the retaliatory tariffs as a portion of the stack bar. I mean on the relative basis to the total, it's small but relative to that business it's pretty large part. Because even though we get ramped up, we will miss seasonality if we don't start shipping bikes and they're made in the U.S. So obviously, we feel good about the ramp up but we’re going to end up having additional tariff impact at least this year assuming the retaliatory tariffs stay in place. From a leverage standpoint, we ended about just around two and half turns coming out of 2018. I definitely emphasized in my prepared remarks that we're in a position where we want to try and get that paid down. We've been pretty consistent with saying two to two and half times. And then obviously, we want to want to keep an eye on the economic landscape and make sure that we're positioned really well to be in a position to handle if a downturn were to happen in the out year. So we'll remain focused on at least maintaining that level of leverage of not bringing it down.

Operator

Operator

And the next questioner today will be from James Hardiman with Wedbush. Please go ahead.

James Hardiman

Analyst

A quick clarification on my favorite chart in the deck, which is Slide 15 to have the earnings log, Robin had asked a question about how the measures. I just want to make sure I understand. The dollar or the $80 million to $90 million that’s before countermeasures, I’m assuming the countermeasures is in the $0.60 to $0.75 of benefits that you're showing there. Is that how they work?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

There's a couple of things, James. I mean, one if you remember last year, we actually talked about price relative to tariffs, because we were trying to take evasive action at that point in time. We've stopped talking about that, because our price increases are covering a number of different things. First and foremost, it’s the features and the quality adds that we've made to the vehicles and then obviously, we're dealing with higher commodity logistics and tariff costs. And so there is a small portion of the price increases that’s on the left-hand side over in those green bars. So if in the position where tariffs were to go away, is there a portion of the price that we'd have to get back. Yes, it's probably a very small, small piece of that that we’d probably get back through promo, but that would be the primary one. As it relates to the other activities where we've been stating off the increases and pushing hard on not just excepting what the suppliers are coming in with that’s already included in the dollar bring down on EPS.

James Hardiman

Analyst

And so is there a net number for that dollar that include countermeasures?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

With it's a dollar with all the countermeasures with the exclusion of pricing, as I mentioned, it's hard to carve out the piece of price, which would be relatively tariff. So that’s why we've steer away from trying to do that. I mean our goal would obviously be to try and hold on to the price if the tariffs were go in that way, but we will have to reevaluate if that happens.

James Hardiman

Analyst

That’s exactly where I was getting at. And then probably too early to update I mean obviously you gave us the five-year plan a year ago and a lots happened since a year ago, most notably the tariffs. But in the context of your 2019 guide, any update to that 15% CAGR through 2022?

Scott Wine

Analyst

James, I think we've spoken quite extensively about what we expect to see out of our strategic sourcing initiative. That is the biggest chunk that we're going to get towards that goal. Obviously, we've got several businesses that we expect significant margin improvement, and I would say motorcycles are in that category, cabs in that category, we see lots of opportunity with boats. So, we wouldn’t have put that out a year ago if we didn't think we were going to be able to hit it.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be Craig Kennison with Baird. Please go ahead.

Craig Kennison

Analyst

Mike, I think you had mentioned in the context of leverage that you want to be prepared for the next downturn. Maybe just walk through what you have done so far to prepare for that inevitability and maybe frame if you can the margin or the decremental margin associated with revenue in a downturn?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

It’s a good question, Craig. I mean Scott and leadership team and I have put together an architecture, so that when that and inevitably happens, we have essentially what we termed playbook to go by. And we've set certain principles. Number one is that we want to preserve liquidity in the company and make sure that we managing any debt load that we have. And obviously between now and whenever that time comes, we will make a concerted effort to continue to pay that down. The second is we want to preserve the strategic investments. If you think back to what happened during the '08, '09 downturn and the reason Polaris came out of it so strong and moved into such a significant market share position is we didn’t cut back on some of those vital investments. So we've made some very clear lines of demarcation. As for the decremental margin, tough to say it depends on the size and scope of our downturn. I think it's safe to assume if you compare us back to where we were in '08, '09, we're very different business. Our fixed cost base is larger. We have more factories than we did at that point in time. And the profitability coming off some of our larger vehicles, like the RZR are much higher than they were back at that point in time. So the decremental margins would probably mirrors something like what we saw back in 2016 when the business went down about 5% to 7%, and that's essentially the way we've modeled it with the associate countermeasures that we would go after again preserving all the strategic important initiatives that we have in the company.

Operator

Operator

And the next questioner today will be David Beckel with Bernstein Research. Please go ahead.

David Beckel

Analyst

Just wanted to took a Part D gross profit flow through a bit. Are you expecting or I think in prior calls you said you expect about 35% gross profit flow through. Is that consistent with your expectations for 2019 as well?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

So if you look at that EPS bridge that James was referring to earlier and you look at what we're getting in terms of 9% to 11% flow through, let’s call that about $400 million to $450 million in revenue. If you backward calculate that, it's going to look like a pretty low drop rate. The reason being is that we have buried within that the R&D increase that I talked about earlier, which is in the high teens. I also mentioned I think when Jamie asked her question about our Gibson project. We have incremental costs associated with the engineering work to validate those savings. And then we've also got the addition of the Boat business, as well as long-term incentive plans that the prior three years have basically been almost zeroed out, and we’re now accruing those essentially to full payout. So when you strip those things out, the volume that's coming through is in the 30% and 40% range, which is exactly what we would expect.

David Beckel

Analyst

And the second question for me just wanted to touch on the Adventures a little bit. It sounds like it's been a huge success for you guys. What are you anticipating in terms of sites and rides for 2019 if you know as of yet? And I was also curious to what extent are you seeing any conversion or new customer adoption from that business?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

We are really proud of the work that the team has done there, expanding as rapidly as they have, just building a plug-and-play model for these best operators. And that’s what we are doing is just continuing to sign up the best operators in every part of North America that we can find. So I think the rapid rise to 90 was good. And I think you could expect almost a pace like that to continue as we move forward. But being very diligent on making sure we are only adding the best operators. The conversion rate is the single best marketing tool we have. I mean, I love our digital marketing efforts, I love some of the campaigns that Indian motorcycles has, but there's nothing better than butts and seats to sell our product. So as we get people riding our products, ultimately they come in and convert. And it's a low single-digits number right now but that low single-digit number overtime as we expand that business will ultimately be helpful. So we are very encouraged by the business itself, but also the opportunity it has to drive future sales.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be Gerrick Johnson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst

I have two questions. The first question on side by side. Who do you think you are getting share from there?

Scott Wine

Analyst

It depends on categories. But clearly, I think we have gained mostly from the Japanese over the last year or so. Our competitor that was recently acquired continues to seed share to almost everyone, so that's been helpful. But no, we feel good about our portfolio. And I'd tell you with the Turbo S launch, with Ranger XP1000, I mean we have got the best products at almost every segment right now. Where we lost a little bit share is Trail where we don't have a new product entry, and I think that's just the reality we live in right now but we feel good about our share position. And returning to share growth in side-by-side both for the quarter and the full year, we will take that. There is I think concerned about somebody building a plant that we couldn't possibly grow in that environment surprised that we were able to do that really.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst

And also on adjustments for 2019, our favorite question here. Will there still be Indian wind down, will there still be Eicher and then amortization what are we backing out each quarter for that?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

I think about Victory, there will not be -- we do not believe there will be anymore Victory wind down. The EPPL business is essentially effectively shutdown. The Indian facilities down and dealerships down in Brazil have been wound down successfully. I think going forward aside from the intangible, the only adjustments that we are going to end up having will be any acquisition costs that we have and then probably some of the restructuring costs and legal costs. But they should be much lower and much smaller than what we have had historically.

Operator

Operator

And the next questioner today will be Joseph Altobello with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Joseph Altobello

Analyst

I just want to go back to tariffs and James question earlier. I think you mentioned the dollar per share of incremental tariffs this year includes the benefit of supplier negotiations but not pricing. Is that correct?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

Correct.

Joseph Altobello

Analyst

And how much were you able to extract from your suppliers, was it meaningful?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

Yes, I mean it's hard to say. I mean, the sourcing guys, it was considerable, both in terms of being able to delay, as well as pushing back on the suppliers. You can imagine an environment where we've got tariffs. They use that as a shield to come in and look for price increases to help cover many of the things that we're dealing with as a company in terms of labor increases and logistics and other commodities. And Ken's teams put a really good process around making sure that we stave off that, as well as pushing back on the suppliers. Given what's happened with China currency, as well as the desire for them to retain us as a client, we've been successful in getting them to share in portions of that. But we're not at a point where we want to put a qualification around that.

Joseph Altobello

Analyst

And then secondly, you mentioned the 3.5% whole goods price increases you guys took in ORVs and motorcycles January 1st. What's been the competitive response? And I know it's early but you pointed out a number of times your competitors do not have the same headwinds that you guys have from the tariff perspective?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Yes, so far we haven't seen much from a competitive response. And I will tell you that our margins are generally better than most of our competitors, so they should take advantage of the price. But we can't. I mean, it's actually not a good idea for us to talk about what competitors might do. So, we'll see. We feel good. Again, ultimately, it's a price value equation. And we talk about price related to tariffs. But really a lot of the price we're talking about is the incremental product benefit that we're bringing out. I mean, I'd tell you, again, I think so everyone brought up the Northstar edition earlier. I mean, it is a phenomenal product with a lot of content to make it such. And therefore, part of the price is just making sure that the value that we're bringing to the dealers and our consumers with the vehicles is being taken care.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be David MacGregor with Longbow Research. Please go ahead.

David MacGregor

Analyst

Scott, can you just talk about what you've learned regarding ORV customer sensitivity to rebasing promotions to the time when financing rates on the rise and how monthly payments are going up. Is the customer maybe expecting more in the way of promotion now? And if so, how you maintain pricing discipline in the face of higher financing rates and an increasingly promotional environment?

Scott Wine

Analyst

What we've learned about promotion in general is that if we work more closely with our dealers and manage promotional execution by region and certain customer needs and buy products, we can be pretty careful with price impact or what not. There's a segment of our customers that are very monthly payment driven and we use promotions to manage that. There's certain customers that want more accessories or just want the dollar rebate on it. So we've got a very sophisticated process for dealing with that. And I think it actually it plays to our advantage as interest rates rise where we have this more sophisticated tool that we can deploy to give people the optionalities they want with promo.

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

And I think, David, just to reemphasize Scott's point. You heard me in my prepared remarks talk about our penetration rates got up to a company high at 35%. So that comes through financial services income below the line. But the reality is that we are putting higher promo in associated with that. So the point being that where we see rate sensitivity, we've got the ability because of the strength of the retail partnerships that we have with three great firms that we can put promo dollars to it. But because we share and the returns they make on those customers, we end up making a substantial portion and if not all of that back, it's accounted for in two different lines.

David MacGregor

Analyst

And then second question is just how are you dealing with increased levels of online competition within the aftermarket business. And are the stores comping positively? And how much of the 2019 mid-single-digit growth is coming from online sales?

Scott Wine

Analyst

The online sales, actually, we feel good about it. We did what we call the ATG transition at that TransAmerican Auto Parts where we switch to a better Oracle platform, which ultimately be a nice competitive advantage. In the near-term that is not all that helpful to us because you've got to reprogram all the algorithms. But we feel good about where the online business sit. I will tell you the marketplaces that we have with Google and Amazon are very, very good for both cap and for our other aftermarket businesses. And I think we're taking good advantage of that. Same-store sales we're not as good in the fourth quarter, but they're trending well in January, this is talking to about TAP related trending well in January. And we expect we should have a good a year there. We've got Craig Scanlon and the team there, I've got a very good plan for that omni-channel business. And ultimately, we think the strength of TAP is that ability to sell online and through the stores.

Operator

Operator

And the next questioner will be Seth Woolf with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Seth Woolf

Analyst

Scott I loved the college football playoff reference, it's very appropriate. So I guess just a couple things starting off, first, wanted to talk about the ORV. You talked about mid-single-digit increases for the year. You're getting an ASP benefit. And if I recall correctly, you said low single-digits is kind of your market expectation in 2019. Did I hear you correctly?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Yes, and that's a change. We haven't seen industry growth rates in a while. So I think that stabilization is a positive sign.

Seth Woolf

Analyst

How should we think about what you guys are able to do, because especially compared to us some of the competitors you have, a lot of products in Mexico. The price increases that you've had to pass along to cover the tariffs is going to be a bit of a headwind?

Scott Wine

Analyst

Well, I think price elasticity of demand would suggest that that's true.

Seth Woolf

Analyst

So then, I mean, how should we think about Polaris, is it flat, is it down low single digits next year?

Scott Wine

Analyst

I think what, Seth, what you're trying to do is correlate against the market backdrop. And I think you can surmise by ORV be in mid-single-digits with price being in there that we're essentially tracking to the ORV market, the industry. So not saying necessarily a lot of share movement and obviously, we'll have a different view of that internally as we push the teams. But I'd also point you back. I mean, our ASPs have been up over the past couple of years in the face of a new competitor coming onto the scene very strongly building a lot of capacity. And so we have demonstrated that capability being more premium price to continue to not only battle back but to continue to take share. And so we've been a little conservative in the way we planned for that going into 2019, but we'll be certainly pushing the team's harder than what we've got in the guidance.

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

And I'll just, I mean brands matter. And we are reinforcing Chris Musso and the team are doing a really nice job with Sportsman, Ranger, RZR in general to making sure that we position those brands appropriately. And ultimately when you've got great products, strong brands and good distribution that's a pretty nice combination to win in this industry.

Operator

Operator

And our next questioner today will be Joseph Spak with RBC Capital. Please go ahead.

Joseph Spak

Analyst

I just want to go back to CapEx for a second. There is a comment that you guided higher next year for a variety of reasons. I believe if you went back to the beginning of this year, you also got it higher, it came in higher. But I think if you look at the assumptions at the time, it seems like it may have -- or you may have been fill up that, it would have been even higher this year. Is that -- A, is that accurate; and B, is that just some projects that were push and reason why '19 CapEx higher? And then just continuing on that line of thought, I think you said Boats isn’t really capital-intensive. But I'm curious as to what you think CapEx to sales over time looks like now for Polaris with Boats?

Scott Wine

Analyst

So Joe, you actually picked up on something that I mentioned it in my prepared remarks but probably not strongly enough. The Fernley distribution center, we had anticipated was going to be fully run through the system in 2018. When we did the original plan and then as we got further along, we realized that the capital would be more of a 2019 recognition. So there is a shift of that. 2018 came in at about 3.7% of sales. And right now, '19 is probably in that same range up to 4%. So number one, it’s the shift to the Fernley distribution center. The second item is we obviously have a fair amount of tooling. And when we continue to ramp our R&D spend, the tooling associated with lot of the new products that you'll see this year, as well as in the next one to two years is obviously playing a big part of that. Now this sourcing project that we've referred to now for a couple years one of the goals of that is to try and take that capital spend down and really have our suppliers co-investing with us. And so we do think that’s going to be a lever. And I think over time you will see us be able to get the business down to say 3.5% of revenue.

Joseph Spak

Analyst

And just one more bigger picture question with some of your competitor announcements. I mean, you guys have had some early initiatives on electrification with motorcycles. It seems like maybe you backed away from some of those initiatives. At least I think initially it was [in-house] Victory and I don’t know if some of those projects were moved over or not. But where do you stand on that opportunity for Polaris?

Scott Wine

Analyst

I was proponent of our efforts with Brammo, which was ultimately it became Victory Electric Motorcycle. What we believe is that the right time to enter the electric market is when there is large consumer demand, the opportunity is for us to make money and the performance and weight and cost, all of that equation come into one. We've got out of it because we couldn’t find that equation and we're not yet prepared to enter back into it until that exists. I mean, I think if you look at automotive, for example, and you know this better than anybody, there is not a lot of folks making money with it. And we're just not -- we have a team focused on it, we have capability building for it. We’re not going to enter the market until we can make money at it.

Operator

Operator

And our last question today will be from Michael Swartz with SunTrust. Please go ahead with your question.

Michael Swartz

Analyst

Just a quick question on recent Larson acquisition, I think it's pretty small. But any framework around size and I guess how that fits with your strategic rationale of going into Boats and expanding that business?

Scott Wine

Analyst

It's a bit ironic. I think that ranks up there with one of the smallest acquisitions we've ever done and it's probably got more coverage than we've got when we bought Boat Holding. So interestingly though what we like about it strategically is it gives us access to the fishing market, which we didn't previously have with our other brands. On a size basis, it's about the same size as our Rinker business, which is relatively small. But for us it was just a very cost efficient way for us to enter the very attractive fishing segment. And I think we feel good about our ability to take that and grow it profitably along with our other Boat brands.

Michael Swartz

Analyst

And then just quick follow-up and up with the price increases going through in motorcycle and ORV on January 1st, I'd assume just given your commentary around pulling back shipments towards the end of the year that there wasn't any materials buy for or pull forward there?

Mike Speetzen

Analyst

No.

Scott Wine

Analyst

Okay. We want to thank everyone for participating in the call this morning. And we look forward to talking to you in next quarter. Thanks again. Good bye.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may now disconnect your lines.